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doppelganger

New Facebook craze can violate terms of service

If you're one of Facebook's 350-million-plus members, you've probably noticed a handful of people on your friends list changing their profile photos to pictures of celebrities, cartoon characters, Muppets, and other notable figures recently.

That's because an unofficial viral craze called "Doppelganger Week" has arisen on the social network. To participate, you change your profile picture to a celebrity or otherwise notable figure whom you resemble (or like to think you resemble).

Nobody's really sure where Doppelganger Week came from or who started it. It's particularly funny considering the recent emergence of more photos … Read more

Virtual worlds at UTR: social networks, or experiments?

Wrapping up the group presentations at Under the Radar's Entertainment & Media conference is the virtual worlds group. Only two of these companies (Doppleganger and Kaneva) offer what most would consider "virtual worlds" or a replacement for real life interaction with others. The other two consist of user avatars, and a video gaming platform.

Doppleganger is a 3-D world similar to Second Life. It survives through a mix of micropayments, and partnerships with various companies who want branded areas and appearances for celebrities, movies, and music. We checked it out a few weeks ago and came away … Read more

Doppelganger building virtual world for MTV

On June 28, Team Webware will be covering Under the Radar: Entertainment and Media, a conference where CEOs from young companies pitch their hearts out to an audience of tight-fisted VCs, skeptical potential customers, and jaded journalists. To prepare for this event, I'm interviewing some of the companies ahead of time. Like Doppelganger, which is a maker of virtual worlds.

Doppelganger CEO Tim Stevens bristled when I compared his currently public project, The Lounge, to Second Life. The Lounge is a smaller world, but it's more focused. Rather than a world that encourages user-generated content above all else, … Read more